Dissident Voice

May
22, 2003

The
almost weekly terror-alerts in the US, followed by stepped up security of
strategic targets, words of threatening warnings from one of the Junta members
and wild speculations in the media, seem to be turning the American people into
a quivering mass of jelly, running to the unelected president for cover and
willing to accept any outrageous infringement on their freedoms. Like Pavlov's
dogs who started to salivate expecting to be fed, by the sound of a bell, the
American people have gotten so conditioned to react to a possible or imagined
danger by the leadership's Pavlovian bell of alert-status that rational
thinking is left far behind. The conditioning has been going on a long time.
During the cold war the people were taught to react to "Defcon"
levels, which filled the same purpose: to keep the citizens under control and
promote more money to the military.

The
terror-alerts are always vague, based on alleged but secret phone-intercepts,
interrogation of illegally held prisoners or other evidence, usually of a
strength that wouldn't convince a bank to lend you a fiver. Those who remember
Colin Powell's "evidence" of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
demonstrated to the UN some months ago know the sort evidence we are talking
about. How they can be sure of when the risk is high but not where the danger
lies is a mystery. "High risk for terror attacks on western interests in
America, Asia, Australia and Europe for the next days." (why not Antarctica?)
When the condition goes back to blue or green why is that? Has the CIA
intercepted a message saying "nah, we do it another time, I gotta go the
the dentist tomorrow"? Or are they (the junta) afraid of wearing out the
orange and red lamps?

According
to Worldnet
Daily, a FBI-agent has revealed, "Most of the time, we have little to
go on, only unconfirmed snippets of information". The same source says
that according to people within the CIA "the administration is pressuring
intelligence agencies to develop 'something, anything' to support an array of
non-specific terrorism alerts issued by the White House and the Department of
Homeland Security."

Since
almost all information that the alert-status is based on is classified, we have
no idea if the Bush-gang jacks it up now and then just to keep folks on their
toes? Or when they want to get a new freedom-limiting Patriot Act
passed? Scared people agree to anything! And the regime wouldn't hesitate to
apply Pavlov's tricks!

So
far no major terrorist-attacks (and remember that it has happened only twice if
you don't count home-grown loonies) have taken place under condition orange
(the regime is probably saving the red lamps for important occasions, like the
election). The only attacks that have taken place then have been on innocent
people by FBI or paranoid patridiots who manage to see Al Qaeda operatives
wherever they look. Unfortunately the present American administration is not of
the quality to tell people, like Roosevelt did in '33, that "the only
thing we have to fear is fear itself" which is what is needed in these
paranoid times. Perhaps Bush & Co has gotten the American people exactly
where they want it. Scared, confused, aggressive and prepared to chip in for
any future war and accept any infringement in its freedoms. That a bunch of
fanatic criminals have reduced the world's mightiest nation to this state of
anxiousness would be highly amusing if it wasn't so tragic.

But
it works! When a majority take leave of their senses to the degree that it
thinks killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians, and with luck, a few
"evildoers", in far away countries will make them safer, then the
brainwashing has been very efficient. When they fool themselves that people
outside the USA don't get affected by feelings of revenge, hate and injustice
that they themselves surely would feel were the roles reversed, it is nothing
but denial and self deceit and it demonstrates a frightening national delusion.
The conditioning of the American people has succeeded beyond expectations and
the obedient media and loyal henchmen in the administration can lean back and
watch the country rot from inside while Ashcroft for the umpteenth time lights
the orange alert lights and warns for terror-attacks and the armed forces
hasten to guard targets that are so obvious and predictable that no terrorist
would dream of planning to hit them.

The
risk of getting killed in a motoring accident is more than a hundred times
higher than the risk of losing your life in a terror-attack in US . Yet more
autos are bought, driving is not limited in spite of the very real danger (in
round figures 50,000/year are killed, year in and year out) and nobody gets
paranoid about it or demand Detroit should be bombed into rubble. The measly
amounts spent on avoiding traffic accidents, though, is peanuts compared to
what is spent on "fighting terror" even though all experience shows
that it does much more good.

The
number killed, deliberately or by accident, by gunfire (more than 30,000/ year,
year in year out) is more than hundred times higher than the number killed by
the "evildoers". Yet guns galore are sold, registration or limitation
is a joke and no laws are passed that seriously take down the number of killed
or lessens the risk that your kid will spray hollow-nosed ammo around the
school. A gun is more important than a dictionary in many families and no
orange alert is blinking every Saturday night in spite of the expected high
death toll.

The
illiteracy, starvation, criminality, ignorance, unemployment and the nonexistence
of secure pensions, cheap and good education, ditto health service and housing
is causing America as a whole infinitely more damage, in economical as well as
human terms, than any terror-attack that realistically can be imagined. Yet
these conditions and systems are not only not improved but steadily dismantled
and left to deteriorate. All alert-systems scream red on these issues for
decades but compared to the armed forces, CIA/FBI/NSA and the other
organizations controlling the world and the American people, what is spent on
them is a joke and a shame for a modern country.

As
long as wars, police-organizations, spy-agencies and armies get precedence in
the national budget and real, existing and ongoing threats are ignored and
dismissed, the American nation is sinking, slowly but surely. The men and women
who once colonized America may not have been educated, intelligent or tolerant
and they didn't hesitate to use indiscriminate violence to get what they
wanted, but one can say one thing about them: they were not afraid to confront
challenges and they met real and existing danger head on, not turning around
and defending against possible or imagined dangers. The men and women who
colonized America might even have dared to ask themselves the obvious question
when somebody tries to do you harm, "why do they do it?" Only the
most stupid of them would answer "they hate our freedoms and
democracy". But then the colonizers turned into terrorists themselves by
today's standards and they didn't even have a terror-alert system. An American
today could ask himself "why is Sweden or Switzerland never targeted by
the evildoers? Those countries are also free and democratic!" You don't
need to be a professor to smell a rat somewhere!

Present
day America is prepared to use violence, but only when the adversary is
defenceless, and present day America has lost all perception of where the real
dangers are. The Bush-junta's Pavlovian terror-alerts are conditioning the
people to act like trained mice in a laboratory and when the junta decides to
finally turn America into a full fledged corporate dictatorship under an
emperor Bush it can easily be done. Just jack up the alert-status to red and
tell the citizens that for the sake of "security" some changes have
to be made. Waving the flags and cheering like the masses at the Nuremberg
rallies, the majority of the American people will turn to the unelected leaders
for protection while its hard-won freedoms and liberties finally and definitely
are taken away.

There
will be prisons enough for the ones who don't cheer.

Jerre Skog is a Swedish
writer, musician and independent observer living in Germany. His writings,
politics and satire, can be found on www.skog.de
and comments are welcome at jerre@skog.de